dache.ch

Although the dacheboard is still very new, my portfolio site www.dache.ch has been online since the summer of 2005.

I thought it would prove an interesting read to follow me through the evolution of my website and hopefully have a better understanding about the way I created this web design. This is part one of a two part article about how dache was created. The second part of the article consists of my own personal branding.

This is the earliest version of the site I was able to find in my archives. While still studying, I decided to create an online presence for my graphic design work and art. It was a great experience launching my own company but it came with a lot of hard work and effort. I had decided to make a very easy to use website from the beginning, disregarding the trends at the time of flash designs for something more practical. I wanted the navigation to be intuitive and invite the user to bounce onto the next page, curious for more. Although these early versions were never online, they laid the ground works for everything you see here today. A few elements from this very basic site can be seen on today’s version such as a horizontal navigation. There was originally to be 3 languages to the site which is something I still would like to implement one day. I had found it very difficult to go much further in the design process of my portfolio without a well-defined identity and decided to scrap the yellow ‘d’ for something much more graphical.

Having found my logo, which will be talked about in the next article, proved to really drive the project forward as I had a new visual language to use and explore. Many minimalist options were thought out with predominantly grey tones. And then I had another idea..

I was really liking the color brown at the time and looking back it could have almost worked with a better shade but I am still very pleased by the neutral colorings of the current design as I have always wanted it to be the content of my portfolio that was the star of the show, not the site itself.

Switching back and forth between designs I found that it was time to launch a site as it had been a ‘coming soon’ page for months. I had also decided to drop the ‘.ch’ aspect of the design for a better identification of the brand instead of the URL.

This was the first released version of the site in May 2006. This also represented a new focus for my career as it was only at this time that I had begun specialising in logo design as opposed to general graphic design. My future choices for the site were all based upon the visual nature of my subsequently completed projects. The site is actually still visible via the Wayback Machine

The white background was soon changed to the dark grey. The site was terribly hard to update at the time as it did not have a content management system but never the less the site was quite well accepted by people, going into a couple of website galleries. Having imagery in the news items really took a lot of space and I eventually removed all images in the news to streamline the page. It was clunky as it relied heavily on pop-ups but it had given me the opportunity to test how people reacted to the featured project and recent works sections of the home page. Over 75% of bouncing clicks came through the featured project link and it is much the same today and thus it is that section of the home page that is given a lot of attention as it also indicates new content to visitors. I had always considered the website as something rather temporary.

The artwork for the about and contact page was quite fun though.

Soon after the release I was already working on the next versions with a special focus on the grid. Although the black and white version was only created to get a feel for the navigation and nothing more, it did have monochromatic charm to it. You may notice a set of music controllers in the top left of the page. At the time I was thinking of using flash as the basis for the site but opted for the advatages of a content management system using Expression Engine and haven’t regretted my choice. As you can see above, a visual project navigation was conceived but never implemented and this is something I am still working on today to perfect.

This was the design that was released in April 2007 and it was a truely great first week. The website was picked up by a lot of people and was consequently added to a lot of galleries:
The Best Designs, Pro Web Art, The Daily Slurp, Dimix Web Gallery, Design by Grid, CSS Website, CSS ImpressCSS Elite, Screenfluent, One Pixel Army, CSS Container, Wake Up Gallery, CSS Based, CSS Mania, CSSGalerie, CSS Exchange,Screenalicio.us, CSS Heaven CSSclip and The Designers Pub to name most of them.

The biggest change since last year is that there is now a visual navigation for the projects as knowing what you are going to see when you click is an important part of website design. I have been working on it ever since, adding new sections such as the dacheboard and overall better functionality. Recently I changed the color scheme too from bright yellows and oranges to a more neutral light grey. Overall I am quite happy with where this site is going and I think without being extremely thorough in my research I would not have got this far. I’m also working on some new additions for the very new future. Design is never done as they say.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this visual tour of the evolution of my site. It has taken some time but do you think that I have taken the right directions? Any suggestions as to how to improve on the current design?